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Reviews
Reviews
This compilation is unique... because of its strong relevance to today's health policy... These narratives matter.
Very helpful... An essential library volume.
This volume is relevant to researchers, clinicians, and health care policy makers, and I recommend it highly.
To begin to understand the many challenges facing the US health care system, you could spend years in the shadow of doctors, patients, medical students, and legislators. Or you could just read this book. Narrative Matters opens a window into what's happening in American medicine through the minds and pens of those in the middle of it all. At times insightful, depressing, uplifting, and direct, Narrative Matters accomplishes a rare feat—a book as well-written as it is necessary.
Narrative Matters showcases some of health care's most stunning writing. The stories are moving, eloquent, and often unforgettable.
For any reader enthralled by the literature of medicine, these fascinating, compelling, and beautifully written doctor stories were written expressly for you.
Narrative does matter. That's why these writers are so successful in making the reader feel and respond to their frustration, anger, pain, sadness, confusion, joy, or loving kindness by writing personal narratives of health care. Had they addressed us on a purely intellectual level, we might have developed a clearer idea about how to create a more equitable health care system, but we'd have less motivation, less passion, for the task. Narrative Matters is a splendid achievement. This wonderful collection will make a big difference in the way the reader thinks about many of the important issues facing health care today. I suspect this book will do a great deal to enhance public awareness of the human stories at the center of our US health care system.
A doctor kneels on a highway and watches a child die from a completely preventable accident, as the boy's father wails, 'Wake up, my son!' A baby dies because of language barriers and bureaucracy in the clinic. A nurse quits in despair, stopped by the system from doing the right thing. A governor makes a wrenching choice between a world-class transplant program and basic care for 600,000 people. If these true stories of needless tragedy don't convince you our health care system is broken, you must have a heart of stone.
Narrative Matters shows how health care policies affect real people. Policy loves charts and statistics. These stories fill in the conflicts, the emotions, the frequent pain and occasional joys of being somewhere on one of those charts. Numbers make no moral demands on us; only faces require a response. In these stories, we see the faces that health care policy is all about.
About
Book Details
Publication Date
Status
Available
Trim Size
6
x 9
Pages
328
ISBN
9781421437545
Table of Contents
Foreword, by Abraham Verghese, MD
List of Contributors
Introduction
Chapter 1. The Practice of Medicine
The Importance of Being
Abraham Verghese
Rethinking the Traditional Doctor's Visit
Maureen A
Foreword, by Abraham Verghese, MD
List of Contributors
Introduction
Chapter 1. The Practice of Medicine
The Importance of Being
Abraham Verghese
Rethinking the Traditional Doctor's Visit
Maureen A. Mavrinac
In the Safety Net: A Tale of Ticking Clocks and Tricky Diagnoses
Maria Maldonado
The Personal Toll of Practicing Medicine
Elaine Schattner
Chapter 2. Medical Innovation and Research
Cancer, Our Genes, and the Anxiety of Risk-Based Medicine
Siddhartha Mukherjee
Beating a Cancer Death Sentence
Jonathan Friedlaender
A Black Alzheimer's Patient Wants to Be Part of the Cure
Katti Gray
Chapter 3. Patient-Centered Care
"Nothing Is Broken": For an Injured Doctor, Quality-Focused Care Misses the Mark
Charlotte Yeh
The Battle of the Bundle: Lessons from My Mother's Partial Hip Replacement
Timothy Hoff
Even in an Emergency, Doctors Must Make Informed Consent an Informed Choice
Cindy Brach
Chapter 4. The Doctor-Patient Relationship
How to Win the Doctor Lottery
Donna Jackson Nakazawa
At the VA, Healing the Doctor-Patient Relationship
Raya Elfadel Kheirbek
When Patients Mentor Doctors: The Story of One Vital Bond
Aroonsiri Sangarlangkarn
Chapter 5. Disparities and Discrimination
"Go Back to California": When Providers Fail Transgender Patients
Laura Arrowsmith
A Simple Case of Chest Pain: Sensitizing Doctors to Patients with Disabilities
Leana S. Wen
Grasping at the Moon: Enhancing Access to Careers in the Health Professions
Louis W. Sullivan
Bridging the Divide between Dental and Medical Care
Gayathri Subramanian
In Rural Towns, Immigrant Doctors Fill a Critical Need
Yasmin Sokkar Harker
An Uninsured Immigrant Delays Needed Care
Cheryl Bettigole
Chapter 6. Aging and End-of-Life Care
"I Don't Want Jenny to Think I'm Abandoning Her": Views on Overtreatment
Diane E. Meier
The Fall: Aligning the Best Care with Standards of Care at the End of Life
Patricia Gabow
Getting It Right at the End of Life
Dina Keller Moss
The Evolving Moral Landscape of Palliative Care
Myrick C. Shinall
Necessary Steps: How Health Care Fails Older Patients, and How It Can Be Done Better
Louise Aronson
A Family Disease: Witnessing Firsthand the Toll that Dementia Takes on Caregivers
Gary Epstein-Lubow
Chapter 7. Maternity and Childbirth
Watching the Clock: A Mother's Hope for a Natural Birth in a Cesarean Culture
Carla Keirns
In the "Gray Zone," a Doctor Faces Tough Decisions on Infant Resuscitation
Gautham K. Suresh
Reversing the Rise in Maternal Mortality
Katy B. Kozhimannil
Chapter 8. Opioids and Substance Abuse
Down the Rabbit Hole: A Chronic Pain Sufferer Navigates the Maze of Opioid Use
Janice Lynch Schuster
In Opioid Withdrawal, with No Help in Sight
Travis N. Rieder
The Fine Line between Doctoring and Dealing
Pooja Lagisetty
Intoxicated, Homeless, and in Need of a Place to Land
Otis Warren
Index
